Mr Camara.

Please subscribe Zakaria Saho on the list at this adress.
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Fye.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Momodou Camara" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 9:10 AM
Subject: (Fwd) Liberia: Waiting for Washington


> ------- Forwarded message follows -------
> From:                   "Africa Action" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date sent:              Thu, 3 Jul 2003 15:51:02 -0500
> Subject:                Liberia: Waiting for Washington
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> 
> AFRICA ACTION
> Africa Policy E-Journal
> July 3, 2003 (030703)
> 
> Liberia: Waiting for Washington
> (Reposted from sources cited below)
> 
> With President Bush's trip to Africa only days away, the Pentagon
> has been asked to prepare contingency plans for participation of
> U.S. troops in multilateral peacekeeping operations in Liberia, as
> demanded by Liberians, West African countries, and the United
> Nations. But the president has apparently not yet made his
> decision. Even if some troops are sent, serious questions remain on
> the details of participation, and particularly on the terms of U.S.
> engagement, given the Pentagon's preference for non-engagement or
> for total unilateral control. The longer the decision is delayed,
> the more prominence it will have as President Bush visits five
> African countries next week, two of them in West Africa.
> 
> This posting contains excerpts from two recent news stories from
> allafrica.com on the debate, and from an extensive 1995 report by
> allafrica.com's Reed Kramer detailing previous failures of U.S.
> Liberia policy, including when the President's father was faced
> with crisis in Liberia in 1990. The full paper, too long to include
> here, is available on the allafrica.com site at the link indicated
> below.
> 
> Meanwhile news reports indicate that the U.S. has suspended
> military aid to about 35 countries, including, in Africa, Benin,
> Central African Republic, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Niger,
> South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia. The countries are signatories
> to the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC),
> and failed to satisfy U.S. demands to sign "bilateral immunity
> agreements" confirming that U.S. nationals can commit war crimes or
> other serious human rights offenses without fear of accountability
> to that international body. For a commentary on the ICC and Africa,
> see the issue of Pambazuka News for July 3, 2003 at:
> http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/pambazuka-news
> 
> +++++++++++++++++end summary/introduction+++++++++++++++++++++++
> 
> Bush 'Still Deciding' on Whether to Send Troops to Liberia
> 
> http://allafrica.com
> 
> July 3, 2003
> 
> By Charles Cobb Jr.
> Washington, DC
> 
> U.S. President George W. Bush says he wants to get enough
> information before he makes a decision on whether to send troops
> to Liberia: "I'm in the process of gathering the information
> necessary to make a rational decision as to how to enforce the
> ceasefire -- keep the ceasefire in place," he told allAfrica.com
> Thursday morning.
> 
> The administration has been pressed by regional African leaders
> and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to send up to 2,000 troops to
> Liberia. Representatives of the West African regional
> organization, Ecowas, met with "our military thinkers Wednesday
> to discuss military options," said Bush, but a report of that
> meeting has not yet reached the White House. "Once the strategy
> is in place I will let people know," Bush promised.
> 
> No details on the number or type of troops that could be deployed
> as part of an intervention force have been released but the
> Associated Press Thursday quoted defence officials as saying that
> U.S. military command in Europe has been ordered to begin
> planning for possible American intervention in Liberia. A
> 'Warning Order' was sent Wednesday night to Europe Commander Gen.
> James Jones asking him to give the Pentagon his estimate of how
> the situation in Liberia might be handled. ...
> 
> ********************************************************
> 
> Bush Pressed To Commit 'Boots On The Ground' in Liberia
> 
> July 1, 2003
> 
> By Reed Kramer and Charles Cobb Jr.
> 
> Washington, DC
> 
> A decade after 18 U.S. Army Rangers were killed by an angry mob
> in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, the Bush administration is
> facing mounting pressure to put American 'boots on the ground' in
> Africa once again. Calls for an active U.S. intervention in
> Liberia are coming from the United Nations and various member
> governments, including Britain and France and leading African
> officials.
> 
> Senior administration officials met at the White House Saturday
> to discuss Liberia during a Cabinet-level 'principals' meeting of
> the National Security Council. Another session is scheduled for
> Tuesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said during a television
> appearance Monday. "There's a sense of urgency with respect to
> the situation, and I don't want to pre-judge when the president
> might decide or what he might decide, but we are seized with the
> matter," Powell told interviewer Jim Lehrer on public
> television's NewsHour program. "We understand that this is a
> problem that has to be dealt with in the very near future."
> 
> Last week, President George W. Bush called on the Liberian
> leader, Charles Taylor, to leave office "so that his country can
> be spared further bloodshed." Addressing a U.S.-Africa Business
> Summit sponsored by the Corporate Council on Africa, Bush said:
> "We are determined to help the people of Liberia find peace."
> 
> Because Liberia was founded by freed American slaves in 1847 and
> was a staunch U.S. ally during the Cold War, particularly in the
> 1980s, many people in Africa and other parts of the globe see the
> country as an American responsibility. However, administration
> policy to date has sent mixed signals to the parties involved in
> the conflict. In mid-June, with fighting in Monrovia escalating,
> the Bush administration positioned a U.S. Navy amphibious assault
> ship, the USS Kearsarge, off the western shore of Africa to aid
> in the potential evacuation of American citizens. The ship,
> equipped with helicopters and a sizeable medical team, arrived
> just as negotiations over Liberia's future reached a critical
> point.
> 
> According to mediators taking part in the talks in Ghana, the
> presence of the American ship was a critical factor in persuading
> the warring parties, particularly Taylor's beleaguered
> government, to agree to end the fighting. But after only three
> days - before the ink on the accord was dry, the ship was ordered
> back to its homeport of Norfolk, Virginia, where it arrived
> Monday following six weeks involvement in the war on Iraq and a
> short stint providing security for President Bush's visits to
> Egypt and Jordan last month.
> 
> "Once Taylor saw that ship steam away, he reverted to his old
> ways - shifting and delaying and refusing to accept what he has
> already agreed to do," said one senior U.S. official involved in
> the issue. Instead of stepping aside for an interim
> administration, as the agreement envisioned, Taylor insisted he
> would serve out his term, which ends in January.
> 
> Despite this setback, the mediators last week managed to get a
> ceasefire in place, after first pressuring the rebels to end
> their assault on Monrovia and then arm-twisting Taylor to join in
> the truce. The accord was the work of Ghana's President John
> Kufuor, current chair of the Economic Community of West African
> States (Ecowas), and General Abdulsalami Abubakar, a former
> Nigerian head-of-state, who is the chief Ecowas negotiator.
> 
> On Saturday, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called
> on the Security Council to augment the Ecowas effort with
> significant support. "International action is urgently needed to
> reverse Liberia's drift towards total disintegration," he said.
> ...
> 
> During a previous war-enduced crisis in 1990, when the current
> U.S. president's father was in office, Assistant Secretary of
> State Herman Cohen toured West Africa to meet with key actors in
> the unfolding crisis, only to be recalled to Washington where the
> focus was on preparation for war with Iraq. "You can only
> concentrate on so many things at once," Brent Scowcroft, the
> national security adviser to President Bush said in a 1993
> interview. The decision proved costly in both human lives and
> humanitarian assistance, Cohen said in an interview last week.
> The instability spread through the region, engulfing Sierra Leone
> and Cote d'Ivoire, and impacting the regional giant Nigeria.
> 
> The first Bush administration "looked the other way" while
> Liberia descended into chaos, Crocker said. This time around,
> Crocker said "it wouldn't surprise me" if President Bush
> "confronts the skeptics in the Pentagon -- and we all know that
> is where they are -- and says this is the time to act." ,,,
> 
> Asked about Liberia on Monday at the Pentagon, Secretary of
> Defense Donald Rumsfeld said: "We've spent time over the weekend
> -- a good deal of time over the weekend -- visiting among
> ourselves about that and thinking through different aspects of
> it," he said. The president has not yet "made a call," he said,
> "nor has the State Department requested an evacuation out of
> Monrovia." "We ought to be engaged," said Susan E. Rice, who was
> assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997 until
> 2001. "Ecowas is saying they will send 3,000 troops as part of a
> multinational force if the United States will send 2,000 troops
> and takes the lead. I think that is a bargain we ought to
> accept," she told the Brookings forum. "For Liberia, the United
> States is the international 911. There is no other." ...
> 
> ***********************************************************
> 
> Liberia: A Casualty of the Cold War's End
> 
> Africa News Service (Durham)
> 
> Excerpts only: see full text at:
> http://allafrica.com/stories/200101090216.html
> 
> July 1, 1995
> 
> By Reed Kramer
> 
> Half a decade ago, with the Berlin Wall coming down and the
> Soviet Union entering its final days, a small-scale conflict in
> West Africa quietly put post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy to an
> early test.
> 
> Liberia's civil war, which began with a cross-border raid by a
> tiny rebel band in late 1989, has claimed the lives of one out of
> every 17 people in the country, uprooted most of the rest, and
> destroyed a once-viable economic infrastructure.
> 
> The strife also has spread to Liberia's neighbors, contributing
> to a slowing of the democratization that was progressing steadily
> through West Africa at the beginning of the decade and
> destabilizing a region that already was one of the world's most
> marginal. U.S. taxpayers have footed a sizable bill -- over $400
> million to date -- for emergency aid that arguably never would
> have been needed had their government used its considerable clout
> to help end the killing.
> 
> As fighting escalated in early 1990, the Bush administration
> faced a serious conundrum. Western European and most of Africa
> looked to the United States to take the lead in seeking a
> peaceful resolution of the Liberian crisis, since the country's
> history bears an unmistakable "made in America" stamp. But senior
> administration officials, determined to limit U.S. involvement in
> what was viewed as a "brush fire," rejected the notion of
> inherent American interest or responsibility.
> 
> "It was difficult to see how we could intervene without taking
> over and pacifying the country with a more-or-less-permanent
> involvement of U.S. forces," Brent Scowcroft, President George
> Bush's national security advisor, said in a 1993 interview with
> the author after leaving office. In addition, Scowcroft
> continued, U.S. attention was "dedicated towards other areas most
> involved in ending the Cold War." There was the fall of communism
> in Eastern Europe and, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August
> of 1990, the build up the war in the Gulf. "You can only
> concentrate on so many things at once," Scowcroft said.
> 
> But a range of senior U.S. officials did focus considerable
> attention on Africa's oldest republic. During a crucial period of
> increasing carnage in mid-1990, Liberia was a regular item on the
> agenda of the Deputies Committee of the National Security
> Council, where most major foreign policy problems were handled.
> Later in the year as the crisis deepened, the Deputies dealt
> daily with both Liberia and Kuwait, according to participants in
> the sessions.
> 
> "We missed an opportunity in Liberia," Herman J. Cohen, assistant
> secretary of state for African affairs in the Bush
> administration, said in an 'exit interview' (CSIS Africa Notes,
> Number 147, April 1993). "We did not intervene either militarily
> or diplomatically."
> ...
> 
> The following account of the U.S. decision-making process during
> Liberia's disintegration is drawn from some 30 interviews with
> policymakers at all levels in Washington and abroad, and from a
> review of historical materials and public records, Some of the
> interviews were on the record, but most were with officials who
> agreed to talk only if their names and positions were not cited.
> ...
> 
> Ready-Made Cold Warrior
> 
> It became the job of William Tubman, a reform-minded career
> politician who was electe4d president in 1943 and inaugurated the
> following year, to lead the country into an era when the global
> spotlight turned towards Africa. ...
> 
> The core of his platform was the "Open Door" policy, designed to
> promote the development of the country's largely undeveloped
> interior based on joint ventures between the government and
> foreign investors. ...
> 
> As it had done in the two World Wars, Liberia steered a decidedly
> pro-American course as the Cold War engulfed the globe. The
> United States set up a permanent mission to train the Liberian
> military and began bringing Liberian officers to American
> institutions for further training. In 1959, Liberia concluded a
> mutual defense pact with the United States. ...
> 
> Although Liberia was no longer the focus of U.S. interest in
> Africa -- new nations like Ghana and Nigeria and the
> anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa claimed the bulk of
> official and media attention -- U.S. aid grew steadily. From 1946
> to 1961, Liberia received $41 million in assistance, the fourth
> largest amount in sub-Saharan Africa (after Ethiopia, Zaire, and
> Sudan). Between 1962 and 1980, economic and military aid totaled
> $278 million. In per capita terms, Liberia hosted the largest
> Peace Corps contingent and received the greatest level of aid of
> any country on the entire African country. ...
> 
> The Soldiers Take Control
> 
> Americo-Liberian political hegemony ended abruptly on April 12,
> 1980 when 17 young army officers of indigenous descent staged a
> bloody coup. Tolbert was slain in the Executive Mansion, along
> with more than a score of others, mostly security personnel.
> Another 13 officials died in a nationally televised execution 10
> days later on a Monrovia beach. Coming amid rising public
> pressure for political and economic reform and a crackdown on
> dissent by the Tolbert regime, the takeover was welcomed by many
> inside and outside Liberia as a significant shift favoring the 95
> percent of the population excluded from power by
> Americo-Liberians. ,,,
> 
> Caught off guard by the turn of events, the Carter administration
> reacted cautiously. But after a policy review, an aid package was
> approved "to exercise influence on the course of events," ...
> 
> After Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, support for Liberia was
> increased. Aid levels rose from about $20 million in 1979 to $75
> million and then $95 million, for a total of $402 million between
> 1981 and 1985, more than the country received during the entire
> previous century. Ties with the Liberian army were strengthened;
> the military component of the aid package for this period was
> about $15 million, which was used for a greatly enlarged training
> program, barracks construction and equipment.
> 
> In 1982, Doe was invited to Washington for an Oval Office meeting
> with President Reagan. Although the session began on a miscue,
> with Reagan introducing his visitor as "Chairman Moe" during a
> photo taking in the Rose Garden, Doe received what he wanted -- a
> promise of continued American backing.
> 
> ... As part of the expanding relationship, Doe agreed to a
> modification of the mutual defense pact granting staging rights
> on 24-hour notice at Liberia's sea and airports for the U.S.
> Rapid Deployment Force, which was trained to respond to security
> threats around the world. A year after the meeting with Reagan,
> Doe followed the precedent set by Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko in
> establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, thus breaking away
> from the isolationist stand adopted by most African countries in
> the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
> 
> A Cog in the Anti-Qaddafi Machine
> 
> Exerting a pivotal impact on Liberia policy was the closely held
> fact that Doe and his small country had been drawn into an effort
> to oust Libya's Muammar Qaddafi from power. Within weeks after
> Reagan's inauguration, the CIA, under the direction of Reagan's
> trusted adviser William J. Casey, began encouraging and
> supporting anti-Qaddafi activity by Libyan opposition groups and
> friendly foreign governments. ...
> 
> By the time Doe arrived at the White House in August of 1982, the
> CIA task force had pinpointed Liberia as a key operational area
> -- an easily accessible base for the CIA's heightened clandestine
> campaign against Libya throughout the area. According to
> government officials involved in Liberia at the time, one of the
> first steps taken was to make high-tech improvements in at least
> one of the communication facilities in Monrovia
> 
> Liberia's usefulness as a regional linchpin already had been
> tested during a covert operation in support of Chadian leader
> Hissene Habre, who had successfully ousted his Libyan-backed
> rival, Goukouni Oueddei in June. ...
> 
> According to Woodward, Casey selected Doe as one of 12 heads of
> state from around the world to receive support from a special
> security assistance program. The operations were designed to
> provide both extraordinary protection for the leaders and
> otherwise unobtainable information and access for the CIA.
> Unknown to almost everyone else involved in making decisions
> about Liberia for the administration, this gave the CIA and the
> White House a huge stake in keeping the Liberian regime in place.
> 
> That objective proved increasingly challenging. Although a
> 25-person constitutional commission headed by Amos Sawyer, then
> dean of the University of Liberia, presented its report in early
> 1983, the ruling PRC delayed the holding of a promised
> referendum, creating growing unease in the country. ...
> 
> In early 1984, the government shut down the leading daily, The
> Observer, edited by Kenneth Best, one of Africa's best known
> journalists. The PRC also used a ban on political activity,
> enacted in the aftermath of the coup, to crackdown on critics.
> ...
> 
> When [election] balloting took place, Doe declared himself the
> winner by 50.9 percent of the vote, despite ample evidence that
> he had been defeated. Nevertheless, the Reagan administration
> accepted the results. ...
> 
> Liberians were "baffled" by Washington's reaction and the
> "reluctance to concede the grimness of Doe's human rights
> record," Enoanyi says. The situation grew increasingly bad,
> particularly after a failed coup attempt by Doe's exiled former
> second-in-command Thomas Quiwonkpa, which was followed by
> stepped-up attacks on the opposition.
> 
> After the election results were announced, the [U.S.] House and
> Senate each passed nonbinding resolutions calling for an end to
> U.S. assistance, but the administration announced aid would
> continue. ...
> 
> Meanwhile, the CIA activity in Liberia increased markedly. ...
> The country proved important for another covert action that year
> -- the airlift to Unita mounted after the 1985 repeal of the
> Clark Amendment, which had barred covert U.S. security assistance
> to any of the factions in Angola. Almost as soon as the votes
> were counted, the Agency began shipping materiel, with Roberts
> Field again playing a key support role as a transit point.
> 
> In early 1987, Secretary of State George Shultz landed at Roberts
> Field at the end of a six-nation African tour and, to the
> consternation of many, applauded "continued efforts towards
> political reconciliation" during a luncheon with Doe. ,,, On
> December 24, 1989 two dozen armed insurgents quietly crossed into
> Liberia from the Ivory Coast, ushering in a new and tragic phase
> of the Liberian saga.
> 
> U.S. Policy in the 1990s
> 
> The connections spanning two centuries and the particularly close
> ties of the 1980s led Liberians and others to expect that the
> United States would help when trouble came.
> 
> The 1989 insurgents were led by Charles Taylor, 40, a former
> procurement clerk in Doe's government who fled to the United
> States after being charged with embezzling a million dollars, was
> detained in Massachusetts for extradition and escaped from jail
> while awaiting a hearing. The rebels expected to quickly garner
> support and cover the 200 miles to Monrovia in a matter of weeks.
> ...
> 
> The unrest caused mild alarm In Washington. An interagency
> working group , chaired by Assistant Secretary Cohen, was
> convened to review the situation and reexamine options. This was
> followed by extensive discussions in the Deputies Committee.
> "There were different views on how active we should be," said one
> participant, "but ultimately, the prevailing view was that this
> was something for the Liberians to work out themselves."
> 
> The policy that evolved throughout 1990 can be viewed through the
> prism of three guiding principles.
> 
> 1. Reluctance to Break with Liberia's Rulers.
> 
> As soon as the first reports arrived from Nimba, there were a few
> calls within the administration for a course correction that
> would distance the United States from Doe's unpopular rule. ...
> 
> As the deliberations moved up the policy chain, new global
> considerations took precedence. Liberia's proven utility as a
> military staging base and intelligence monitoring site weighed in
> Doe's favor. Moreover, policymakers were instinctually leery of
> Taylor, since they had intelligence indicating he had received
> modest backing from Libya, including training for some of his
> men.
> 
> 2. Disregard for the Potential Impact of Low-Level Engagement.
> 
> U.S. prestige carried more sway in Liberia than most senior
> policymakers realized in their 1990 evaluations. The inclination
> was to downplay the significance of historical ties rather than
> employing them as tools for successful diplomacy. ...
> 
> 3. Preference for Arms-Length Diplomacy.
> 
> Forceful diplomatic engagement of the kind that has long been
> routinely employed by superpowers was never attempted in Liberia.
> Instead, U.S. involvement was limited largely to the protection
> of American lives and the provision of emergency aid. And there
> was not much public pressure to do anything more. ,,,
> 
> West African governments, however, expected and wanted a more
> active American role. "We could not understand how the U.S.
> government with its long-standing relationship with Liberia could
> remain so aloof," said Ambassador Joseph Iroha, a career Nigerian
> diplomat who represented Ecowas in Monrovia for several years
> during the war. West African states sent in troops to stop the
> fratricidal killing," he said, because "we couldn't allow this
> sort of thing to continue."
> 
> What Have We Learned from Liberia?
> 
> Unfortunately, by the time Ecowas was able to organize an
> intervention force in late 1990, the country's dismemberment was
> far advanced and domestic division had been cemented with
> widespread bloody conflict. In addition, the peace force brought
> problems of its own. ...
> 
> Critics of U.S. policy argue that even after the administration
> decision to limit direct American involvement, Washington could
> have done much more, both materially and diplomatically, to
> bolster the West African effort and make it more successful.
> 
> No one can judge with hindsight whether the loss of an estimated
> 150,000 lives and the regional devastation spawned by the
> Liberian crisis could have been prevented without extended U.S.
> military engagement ...
> 
> What is certain is that failure to stop the fighting during 1990,
> before the entire country was demolished, erected barriers to a
> solution that still have not been overcome. The result was to
> condemn Liberia and much of the region to continuing suffering
> and to divert scarce international assistance from economic
> development to sustaining refugees. ...
> 
> +++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
> 
> Date distributed (ymd): 030703
> Region: West Africa
> Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +security/peace+ +US policy focus+
> 
> ************************************************************
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